ARAD. - A city in western Romania, capital of the homonymous province in Transylvania. It appears in history as early as the 11th century and by the end of the 12th century it was the seat of a Catholic bishopric. In 1705 Isaia Diaconovici established a dissident bishopric there, but in 1713 Bishop Ivanichie Martinovici adhered to Rome, and from 1720, under Bishop Sofronie Ravanovici, conversions made ever greater progress until the episcopate of Nistor Ivanovici (1829–30).
At the beginning of the 20th century, A. was the cultural and national center of the Transylvanian Romanians; here the Romanian National Council prepared the historic assembly of Alba Iulia (1 December 1918) for the union of Transylvania with the motherland.
The city has churches for the various rites, a dissident bishopric and a Lutheran one, a Latin-Catholic vicariate and a Greek-Catholic archpriestry, as well as a Minorite house, seat of the provincial superior of the Order for Transylvania.